The Secret Military Moon Base Probably Actually Exists

a reply to: roguetechie

My entire position in this thread is based around the idea that there's definitely some things that are suggestive out there and we just plain do not have anywhere near the amount of information we'd need to say that such a base definitely did not exist or would have been discovered and made public or etc.

The thread is about there being a moon base? A base that used shuttles that needed runways? Not there was a short lived moon base. You could say each lunar lander site was a moon base.

Well, if you have physical evidence, please cite the evidence. Suggestive? Even flat earthers can create a suggestive argument. There is suggestive evidence reptoids rule the earth?

The hallmark of conspiracists? Faith based off innuendo, but always short on credible arguments, logic, and feasibility. Reality vs Hollywood movie physics.

originally posted by: neutronflux

Even flat earthers can create a suggestive argument.

I had a very strong feeling you were coming from that perspective.

Sorry I haven't posted lately, I'm dealing with a lot of difficult real life challenges.

a reply to: neutronflux

Wait what?

No the flat earthers cannot create a suggestive argument!

The only thing their arguments suggest is that they need to repeat the 5th grade!

As to the Shuttle looking designs and etc Muzzleflash posted as part of his initial few posts... Those caught my eye just as much or more than they caught yours, but for entirely different reasons.

I haven't brought up exactly why they've caught my eye in this thread partly because i don't want to muddy the waters with yet another conspiracy theory on top of a conspiracy theory. Especially since I feel kinda halfway insane and stupid for spending the time I do looking into this theory which may be completely nuts considering the initial sources which pointed me towards it. (I obviously think there's decent reasons for pursuing it but I could be totally wrong. However it does dovetail quite interestingly with muzzle's stuff in here)

Depending on several factors though, my weird side conspiracy theory thing could among other things actually be what Air and Space magazine reported as something Kelly Johnson used to say was actually referring to. This saying went something along the lines of if we could use atomic hydrogen as rocket fuel rather than molecular hydrogen (h2 I believe) we could send satellites to orbit in rockets the size of Ford trucks. I'm not saying that it's an actual Kelly Johnson quote because between Kelly Johnson Nikola Tesla and etc the internet is chock full of misattributed and outright made up quotes. I do however remember reading this in a late 80's early 90's vintage issue of Air & Space and I'm pretty sure this issue was one with the sr-71 on the cover, an interview with Kelly Johnson, and a small blurb about how the air force was looking into ways to massively increase an aircrafts radar signature as some form of "antistealth".

While what I've been looking into has nothing to do with atomic hydrogen, if it exists it would very likely produce a similarly major increase in your bang per cubic centimeter or gram of fuel while in atmosphere, and possibly beyond the atmosphere too. However it would do it by reacting with and producing thrust from another atmospheric gas in addition to oxygen, one that makes up WAY MORE of the atmosphere to boot! It would likely also store easier and more densely at less extremely low temperatures and be much less explodey reactive and etc. To say the least, that would change the bejesus out of a bunch of the constants we're using to decide whether any of this is even remotely possible.

On the note of landing strips and runways such shuttles would "need" on the moon though... That answer is pretty simply that such things would be extremely superfluous considering the whole trying to use aerodynamic forces to takeoff and land on the moon wouldn't work for jack thing.

Lift depends on atmospheric pressure that just isn't there on the moon. Matter of fact, with the smaller shuttle deals you could probably catch the little bastards in nets like we catch some UAV! (Don't try this at home kids)

Granted, I'll give you that all I've done here is point out negatives and still haven't explained where the launch gantries, ship catchers, and all the other stuff you'd need to regularly launch and land stuff would be. But yeah, that's why you wouldn't see runways. And further, you now know a part of why I consider this moon base thing at least somewhat plausible.

a reply to: roguetechie

One, there is no doubt a moon base could be built and staffed.

Two, the issue is how you would keep it secret?

There, you.

you could probably catch the little bastards in nets like we catch some UAV! (Don't try this at home kids)

Building a net would still take excavation and construction equipment that would have to run in an oxygen free atmosphere. How do you power them? And the rub is the moon’s distinct surface. Just one dump pile from excavation would give the whole net building underground moon base thing away. Anything that would require a foundation would require digging. A recovery net would still require a massive foundation and some sort of concrete. Or massive pilings, and the steel to set them.

Four, can you state when the moon base was constructed and staffed? How long the base was in operation? How it is keep secret year to year? It’s keeping the base secret year to year that kills the plausibility. Not a single accident from decades of speculated secret moon base operations? It would just take one little “bastard” missing a recovery net.

Five, nothing you have posted is conducive to building a secret moon base. Again, how has the base escaped detection by international study of the moon using photography, radar, gamma ray detection, infrared photography, and ultraviolet photograph.

Five, can cite rocket launches by rockets with the fuel capacity to get construction equipment to the moon? Get shielding to the moon for protection against radiation. Get the needed power supplies to the moon to run construction and excavation equipment?

Six, how is an atom hydrogen rocket conclusive to more easier to build, smaller, and more secret? Sounds like something Russian and Chinese spies would take note of?

a reply to: neutronflux

I'm actually with you on the landing and recovery thing, and truthfully I only mentioned the net thing because if people had really seen the sizes and flight characteristics of drones they've caught using variations on that technique they'd be shocked.

If you asked me to spec out a working system for that even for smaller drones, I honestly couldn't tell you how to build an acceptable one!

There's also the fairly unknown, but potentially applicable to this conversation Brodie rig from world war 2 which allowed small single engine aircraft to be launched and recovered from an LST sized boat using a cable run and trapeze system. I couldn't design you one of those either.

But these things plainly existed, even though an overwhelming majority of us couldn't design or build one to save our lives.

A majority of the stuff you'd need for a moon base is far beyond my capabilities to even conceptualize fully, but this doesn't mean that there aren't individuals and teams out there that could knock out 3 or 4 tricky solutions a day on bad days and ten on good ones!

On your questions about the observation side of stuff...

There's some threads on this forum that talk about spy satellite optics and their capabilities about as in-depth and bleeding edge as you can imagine without crossing the line into stuff they can't divulge. In these threads it's made very clear that while satellite tech in the various spectra is pretty amazing, even now it still has pretty concrete limits even here on earth.

The stuff that has been sent near the moon or photographed from earth or earth orbit is not nearly as roided up and close to the bleeding edge as spy sat tech, at least as far as we know.

There's very definite limits in the size of things that any of them have been able to resolve which up until the last 10 or 15 years or so would have been fairly easy to stay under with some creativity and pretty basic precautions.

For a full up classified military installation hidden on the moon though, there'd be whole arsenal's of the absolute best techniques, technologies, and other methodologies available to them to go about the business of keeping stuff hidden. A pretty good portion of which doesn't involve sending anything physically to the moon. Other such things would require physical cargo to be sent or stuff to be manufactured in situ at the moon base, but when you start really looking at what you could do with a layered approach that you had a few decades to get a head start on...

It totally could be done.

The problem is that you're wanting specifics for stuff that if I had any specifics for I probably wouldn't be able to tell you because they'd be really really classified.

The whole thing is though that even without having these specifics, there's easily enough general information available out there to come to the conclusion that it's not impossible for me.

And as to your question 5... No I can't cite specifics about such systems and technologies, but I will say that there's some pretty tantalizing tidbits out there which make me very strongly believe that such systems are, and have been for a very long time, quite possible.

That's a large part of what my last post was about.

Edit: By quite a long time wrt the propulsion systems etc... It very well could be that even muzzle's earliest possible base timeline could have been met depending on when exactly certain stuff stopped exploding randomly if you looked at it wrong. I'd guess a little bit later though... Maybe? It's all so speculative that there's reasons I don't really bring it up.


Second edit: It's one of those how many paper clips did it take to get us to the moon things...

Answer: god damn Nazis!

originally posted by: roguetechie

The stuff that has been sent near the moon or photographed from earth or earth orbit is not nearly as roided up and close to the bleeding edge as spy sat tech, at least as far as we know.

Not strictly true. A lot of the optics that were used in pre-Apollo and during Apollo (for example) were developed directly from state of the art spy satellite technology, and have resolved things just a few metres across (eg the lunar modules and rovers on the ground). The Clementine mission was designed to test out the capabilities of technology for use by the US Navy.

There's very definite limits in the size of things that any of them have been able to resolve which up until the last 10 or 15 years or so would have been fairly easy to stay under with some creativity and pretty basic precautions.
!

The main limit is mass. There is a limit to how much mass you can fling into lunar orbit for a given size of rocket, and also how close you can get a piece of equipment to the ground before it crashes. A lot of the equipment sent to lunar orbit has the same kind of resolution you find in terrestrial satellites but the lack of surface detail means it doesn't look as though it is showing you much.

No-one is arguing that constructing a moon base is impossible. What's being disputed that has been done, or that there is the slightest hint of evidence that it has been done, or even that there would actually be much point in doing it other than as an esoteric data gathering exercise with tourism opportunities.

a reply to: roguetechie

Because building a moon base that can sustain life is very specific. You think physics works like a Hollywood movie? It would just take years, funds, prototypes, and thousands of individuals to create a reliable power plant. It cannot be solar panels, which would probably be the safest and lightest method to power the base. Solar panels are not very applicable to secrecy on a moon scape.

Landing craft secretly is a big deal. It’s actually the first problem on physically hiding the moon base. Items for the base would have to touchdown on the moon by some means. Parachutes would not be very effective. If a single use rocket is used, then you need a yard to store and repurpose the spent shell. If you could use a rocket that can return to earth, the additional fuel would take up space that could be used for cargo. You would still need a construction yard to lay down building materials and equipment until the underground facility is built. Then after you get underground, how do you hide the construction yard and excavated dirt? Maybe rake out the yard. and throw ice balls down to make craters. You still wood have a age of the crater problem, and lack of meteorite material in the center of the craters.

To figure out how you find a hidden moon base, you have to speculate how to build one. After you visualize the problems, then you can think of the solutions. Once a list of credible solutions is created, then you can see if those solutions would give clues on the existence of a moon base.

I still hold to:
1) The most likely reason a year to year operating secret moon base was never outted, because there is no staffed secret moon base. On the other hand, who knows what secret automated equipment was left by the lunar landings?

2) Each year a speculated moon base is operated, the chances of being outed increases.

3) Making a moon base habitable is not conclusive to making a base secret. Why make a base secret when there was no need, and the extra cost could be used in many more efficient ways.

a reply to: OneBigMonkeyToo

Yeah I'm fairly aware of what the resolutions were like in the early days as compared to the newest probes which are far higher resolution. A few meters can be worked with quite easily.

Now some of the newer probes .... Those would be tricky.

a reply to: neutronflux

I'm very aware of what it would take in the sort of meta sense, but some of the moon specific elements of it are obviously beyond my knowledge.

Really, I don't think that any power plant besides a nuke plant could possibly work for base power just because you'd need so damn much of it.

But really, let's be honest here it all hinges on the ships first and foremost, because if you can't schlep a damn reactor up there in pretty much one piece you'd be screwed.

Oddly enough, I just checked and if my oddball theoretical technology thing is real I can safely say that getting rid of the extra dirt from digging wouldn't be much of an issue at all. It would also go a helluva long way to making the fuel and other situations pretty manageable.

That's almost bizarrely convenient...

I wish I had a bit more time to look into this right now because it really is getting kinda interesting.

a reply to: roguetechie

What was the solution to getting rid of the extra dirt? Process it in some way that would require more equipment and a larger base footprint?

a reply to: neutronflux

how much dirt are we talking here ?

one large volcanic tube could house any waste material

hadn't they discovered a 50Km volcanic tube just sitting there with nothing inside it !

a reply to: sapien82

With radar surveys that also show no buried moon bases. With no signs of any soil disturbances which should be created by construction equipment. Equipped powered how on a moon void of oxygen?

a reply to: neutronflux

Pretty much exactly that yes LOL...

Which means that viability would hinge extremely strongly on just how much machinery etc you'd need to do it.

But

Since this one thing is apparently the second most abundant ingredient of the moon's surface, a mildly efficient single stage process would still let you get rid of a crap ton of your dirt from excavation.

Additionally, since the two products you'd get from this is rocket fuel and air you're looking at not needing to excavate as much to hide tank farms etc, wouldn't need as many supply runs from earth, and a few other pretty neat effects. Effects like better using reactor waste heat so you don't have to dump it in some stealthy manner.

Like you pointed out, the best way to really figure out if such a base were possible is to point by point go through each thing it would need, establish how they could accomplish it, and then verify whether any of the requirements to do such a thing directly conflict with hard limits like payload weight and size capacities etc.

The problem though is that as soon as you introduce even one classified technology element, your ability to analyze meaningfully degrades disturbingly quickly.

It's why I was trying not to bring up the whole mystery super fuel thing in this thread. Because even supposing it is real and is being used for a moon base, there's no way there's enough information able to be pieced together to give us any sort of concrete picture of how it changes the various factors wrt a hidden moon base beyond a very vague much bigger payloads from much smaller launch systems generalities.

a reply to: roguetechie

What fuel? And how are you making mass disappear? Just to refine uranium takes a good amount of energy? If you are mining material, and making it disappear, then you have the opposite problem. Large voids and strip pits?

a reply to: roguetechie

The old because of magic technology theory again. Technologies that are secret are still based in actual known civilian experiments/theories? And then become mainstream in around twenty years? When was the moon base supposedly built?


What is going to shield the staff from cosmic radiation? Other than shielding, or dept? Minimize time at the base?

Great Post....I really liked the article that talked about the plans and the common theme they have. It certainly is one of the more plausible theories out there in the conspiracy field. Well that and younger dryas impact stuff lol

What if the moon base is a one way trip? Once you arrive there is no leaving. That would make some of the logistics simpler. Just have to land supplies and people every now and then.

a reply to: neutronflux

Honestly I could see this technology staying secret really long term, and not being used too extensively in it's entire tenure as a black technology.

Not only would it provide some pretty commanding advantages in select applications, but the other side getting ahold of it and using it really extensively could potentially make your life harder than only using it where absolutely necessary.

But then you get into the whole it's a really out there theory on the very edge of some very dubious speculations... Which it is.

Which is why I was trying not to bring it up because the magic technology argument sucks just due to it being so frustrating and disappointing wrt answers.

The shielding thing is a very good question though.

Really my one question would be how the hell are they keeping people alive and healthy up there if such a base exists? The shielding thing and the general way being in space seems to fairly quickly screw humans up as well as food etc issues are pretty major.

If you go the minimize time at the base route, you're probably looking at somewhere between 3&6 months per person up there. That gets you into crazy large number of people who would have to have been there for at least one rotation disturbingly fast.

For example if you figure that the base has a 16 man contingent at all times (really I'm convinced you'd need something closer to 50%-75% the crew size of a los Angeles or sea wolf class attack sub for the base to actually be useful) but even with 16 men and 6 month rotations you're looking at needing right around 4 full complements plus 12-16 guys in the training pipeline at all times just for base crew. So that's 72 people at any one time with 12-16 new people brought in every year. You'd be at several hundred people pretty quickly who had actually been there and done 2-12 years worth of rotations.

And the option is either that or figure out how to dramatically increase the amount of time people can spend in space, lift a medical team and a daycare team, and a bunch of other craziness.

I just don't even know man, I think it probably could be done and even kept secret but if it was it has to be for something that's really worth it!

You're talking hacking space probes to hide any telltales you can't adequately disguise, massive numbers of people, big money, and a very ruthless Manhattan project style security apparatus around the whole operation. (Only better of course because Manhattan leaked like a bucket after I've used it as a shotgun target.)

Projects like this have existed in other countries. As an example, we know very little about the Chinese nuclear weapons programs or even their strategic weapons forces. So it's totally possible here too.

But if it has happened, we'd need far more information about at least a piece or two of the effort before we can even start building a picture of what it looks like.

I'm not saying that I don't believe a secret moon base has been built though.

All I'm saying is that I can't answer a large number of your questions in a way that satisfies my own standards, much less yours.

Any specific answers I gave you would be rank speculation on my part which is why I've avoided specifics. I just don't know!

It seems at least somewhat plausible to me, and I'm very comfortable and reasonably confident in my reasoning when it comes to my own position on the matter.

But even if i could lay out the thousands of little things that all combine to give me my position on the subject, I highly doubt they'd be anywhere near as compelling to you. And really they shouldn't be!

Anyway, what do you think they'd do about the food thing? If you had a secret moon base would you grow fresh vegetables up there?

Bonus questions: how do you feel about space bacon?
I also wonder about moon fish... Aquaponics could be really helpful when it comes to life support, but would fish survive in moon gravity? If not them, what about shrimp or crayfish? I wonder if they'd get massive?

a reply to: jjkenobi

If you went that route you get into some really unpleasant choices really quickly as soon as someone has a bad accident or even when the first colonists just start getting too old to do their duties and needing too much in the way of care and supplies...

Sort of a high tech version of set grandma adrift on an iceberg / if you're too injured to contribute we can't afford to keep feeding you and providing you air situations.

Very ugly if true